Senate rejects $435 million university funding cut

The Senate today rejected a $435 million cut by the Abbott Government to Australia’s universities.

This measure precedes the $5.8 billion in cuts to universities and student support announced in the Budget – it would have been additional to the Government’s savage Budget cuts.

The Government sought to cut $435 million from Australia’s universities despite reneging on its promise to deliver the Gonski school reforms in full as originally intended.

And today the Senate voted 34 to 29 to prevent the cut by disallowing the Higher Education (Maximum Amounts for Other Grants) Determination 2013 made under section 41‑45(1A) and (1B) of the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

This is a small victory against a government determined to fundamentally undermine the structural basis of the higher education system in pursuit of an alarming ideological agenda.

This is a government that promised no changes to education funding before the election but is now happy to strip $1.9 billion from Commonwealth course contributions and make $100,000 degrees the norm.

This is a government that has no qualms about saddling students with crippling debts that will take decades to pay off.